The regional government of northwest China’s Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region has announced plans to open the countries first “Internet Plus Healthcare” demonstration zone.

The proposal has been approved by the national healthcare commission and contains plans to build a healthcare big data center in Zhongwei and an industrial park in Yinchuan, the region’s capital, to attract healthcare enterprises.

According to the deputy director of the Health and Family Planning Commission of Ningxia, Huang Yong, the region is “committed to integrating Internet Plus with medical care to ensure more comprehensive coverage of high-quality medical resources and improve the efficiency of medical services”.

The private health sector, follow by finance, suffered more data breaches than any other sector in between April and June.

The data breaches report, published quarterly by the Office of Australia Information Commissioner (Oaic), found that of the breaches, 59% were malicious or criminal attacks, and human error accounting for 36%.

Private health suffered 49 in total, with 29 being attributed to human error. The report follows changes to the Privacy act in February, which details the responsibility of entities to report breaches that result in serious harm to individuals involved.

It also represents the first time data for a full quarter has been released regarding breaches.

Sugary drinks and unhealthy snack foods will be banned from Queensland public hospitals and health care facilities in a bid to crack down on obesity.

Targeting childhood obesity especially the hospital ban of junk food is just one phase as part of the radical overhaul by the Queensland State Government.

State Health Minister Steven Miles has lead the movement by developing a nutritional standards guideline, which is expected to then be adopted by other states.

Australian childhood obesity numbers have seen a dramatic increase in recent years and Queensland wants to start at a grass-roots level to combat this national health issue.

These guidelines aim to prevent the advertising of junk food around children in public schools, sport centres, community recreation venues and other government-owned and operated facilities like hospitals.

China is preparing to expand the number of cancer drugs for which patients can be reimbursed under national government-backed health insurance plans, state media reports.

The official Xinhua News Agency stated that the recently established new state medical insurance administration has identified drugs used to treat different cancers for inclusion on the reimbursement list.

Despite government-backed medical insurance assistance, a cancer patient in China pays 220,000 yuan on average for treatment, 1.75 times an average family’s annual disposable income, according to a 2017 study.

Allowing reimbursement on cancer drugs is the state’s latest move to ease the financial burden on cancer patients in China, offering them a more optimistic outlook on diagnoses.